Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Hillary Rodham Clinton has lied so many times she probably doesn't even know what the word "truth" means. The Democratic nominee spoke at the American Legion national convention today in Cincinnati where she launched a whopper of a lie to the legionnaires, where by the way she received a tepid reception.

"I know some of you have never voted for a Democrat before; I get that," Clinton said. "My dad was a Rockefeller Republican, but I learned at our dinner table that we can disagree without being disagreeable."

The idea of Hillary Clinton sitting calmly during a political discussion at the family dinner table tests even the most vivid imagination, but let's leave that point aside for now. By all accounts Hillary's father, Hugh E. Rodham, was a staunch supporter of Barry Goldwater's 1964 doomed presidential campaign, during which the Arizona conservative famously declared, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Goldwater repeated that phrase during the 1984 Republican National Convention, when Ronald Reagan was running for his second term in office.

Nelson Rockefeller, the big-spending, big-government governor of New York in 1964, was the leader of the liberal wing of the GOP. By 1980 the nascent Reagan Revolution had chased out most of the elements of what were known as the Rockefeller Republicans from GOP leadership. Nelson himself died in 1979.

Let me get back to Clinton's dad. In her autobiography, Living History,she described her father as a "rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican and proud of it."

He was not a Rockefeller Republican. Hillary can't even be truthful about her father.

Well, Trump tried to hold a rally at the UIC Pavilion in March and was forced to cancel because an anti-Republican riot broke out, led in part by Black Lives Matter radicals who never seem to protest the daily carnage on Chiraq streets.

Hillary Clinton is in the middle of a three-day fundraising spree in the rich Hamptons area of Long Island. She has no real campaign appearances plans, she won't be meeting with voters who aren't multi-millionaires, and she won't be doing something she hasn't done in nearly a year--hold an open press conference.

Trump regularly meets with regularly voters, holds numerous press conferences, and he rarely takes a day off from the campaign trail.

Which candidate has more stamina? Which candidate is more transparent? Which candidate knows what Americans want?

Monday, August 29, 2016

Huma Abedin — the long-serving Hillary Clinton aide who prides herself on her loyalty and discretion — again finds herself under a glare of unwanted scrutiny after announcing her separation from husband and disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.

Weiner lost his job and now potentially his marriage after repeatedly getting caught sending suggestive messages to women on Twitter.

Abedin has periodically garnered headlines over the years for her roles in controversies over donor access to Clinton, her boss's use of a private email server at the State Department and Abedin's overlapping employment with an outside consulting firm while she was a government employee. But it is her marriage to Weiner that made her a somewhat reluctant celebrity — her choices and motives up for public debate, her marriage the subject of a documentary, and her designer clothing the subject of public scrutiny and magazine profiles.

"After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband," Abedin wrote. "Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy."

Earlier this month the Marathon Pundit family traveled to the Pacific Northwest. Our first significant stop was Mount St. Helens.

To get to the only active volcano in the contiguous United States you have to travel through Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which is named for the first forester of the United States Forest Service. Pinchot was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt. In his book The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, leftist journalist Timothy Egan recounts Pinchot's role in guiding the USFS in its early days and his dismissal by Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft. Pinchot, a Republican like Teddy and Taft, later served two separate terms as governor of Pennsylvania.

We took the scenic way from Portand to Mt. Saint Helens--the Wind River Highway.

Amazingly enough the Lewis River is not named for Meriwether Lewis, but rather for an early settler.

That's Mount St. Helens from the south. There was very little destruction on this side of the volcano from the 1980 eruption.

The '80 blast was directed to the north. Here you see some dead trees killed by the eruption along with some new growth.

Yes, that's steam emitting from St. Helens. The mountain is just four miles away from where I snapped this pic. The 1980 eruption caused the biggest landslide in recorded history; Mt. St. Helens elevation shrank from 9,677 feet above sea level to 8,364 feet in just seconds.

Thirty-six years after the mountain blew its top there are still tree mats, that is, piles of floating logs, on Spirit Lake.

That's the southern end of Spirit Lake. Somewhere beneath the water and 200 feet of muck and ash lies Spirit Lake Lodge, which was owned and operated by Harry R. Truman. The curmudgeonly 83-year-old World War I veteran refused federal evacuation orders; Truman's beloved mountain entombed him and his 16 cats. In the made-for-TV movie rushed out after the eruption, St. Helens, Art Carney plays Truman.

From the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument you can also catch a breathtaking view of Mount Adams, an inactive volcano just 34 miles away. You can also see Mount Rainier, Washington state's tallest peak and yes, another volcano, from the national monument.

One last look.

This is the closest I'll ever get to the moon.

From death comes life.

Here's a view from one of the many hiking trails inside the national monument.

A poster of a tanned couple hung on the back wall surrounded by shelves of tanning lotions and oils, as John Hodges, owner of Club Soleil scanned his financial records.

"Since 2010, my business has decreased by 37 percent," said Hodges. "That's even with the additional business I picked from some of the surrounding tanning salons that have closed in the last few years."

After the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 with the tan tax, businesses that operate ultraviolet tanning lamps are required to add a 10 percent tax on all sales of tanning services.

Local tanning salons are feeling the heat as the 10-percent tax have left some businesses struggling to stay to open. Across the United States, more than 1,000 tanning salons have closed its doors in the past years, with more than eight salons closing in Metro Detroit.

Last weekend was another typical violent spell in Chicago, with the exception that one of the ten people shot to death was the cousin of Chicago Bulls star Dwayne Wade. Nykea Aldridge, a mother of four, was murdered Friday afternoon while pushing a baby stroller. Meanwhile 57 others were wounded in Chiraq.

Most of the shootings occurred in the south and west sides, although two of the fatal attacks, one in the South Loop and one in Uptown, occurred in places where such violence is less common.

Two gangbanger brothers who are out on parole have been charged in the Aldridge slaying.

Two brothers were charged in connection to the murder of Nykea Aldridge, a mother of four and cousin of Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade, police said.

Derren Sorells, 22, and Darwin Sorells, 26, were both charged on Sunday, according to a tweet from Chicago Police Communications Director Anthony Guglielmi. Both are documented gang members and on parole.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is expected to speak about the charges at 11:30 a.m.

Aldridge, 32, was pushing a stroller when she was hit by a stray bullet Friday afternoon in Chicago's Parkway Gardens neighborhood. Investigators said Aldridge was an innocent bystander and not the intended target.

A 32-year-old mother of four — a relative of Chicago Bulls player Dwyane Wade — was fatally shot while pushing a baby stroller Friday afternoon on Chicago's South Side.

The incident occurred around 3:30 p.m. in the 6300 block of South Calumet, outside Dulles Elementary School. Police say the victim was pushing the stroller when gunfire erupted.

Chicago Police Deputy Chief James Jones says the victim — identified by family as Nykea Aldridge — was an "innocent party to this senseless shooting."

"She was just leaving Dulles School, walking down the street, and as she was walking down the street some type of altercation occurred that did not involve her. Shots were fired during this altercation, and subsequently she was shot and taken to the hospital where she succumbed to her injuries," Jones told reporters Friday evening.

Wade, a longtime member of the Miami Heat and a 12-time NBA all-star, is a South Side native who later moved to the city's south suburbs.

Police said Thursday a Bothell High School teacher who said he was assaulted from behind in his woodshop classroom last May staged the attack himself.

Cal Pygott said he was working on a loud machine in his classroom and wearing ear muffs May 19 when someone came from behind and hit him hard enough that it knocked him out. He said he woke up with a zip tie around his neck, and the attack left his face red and swollen.

Another staff member found Pygott stumbling outside the classroom, removed the zip tie and called 911. Pygott was taken to Harborview Medical Center. Police said he did not sustain serious injuries.

Police said Thursday evidence, including a hammer, the zip tie, blood, and a piece of butcher paper with the words "This man is not God" written on it, and fingerprints were collected from the scene. Detectives also conducted several interviews.

The lying teacher may face charges for is fabrication. I certainly hope that the school will begin the likely arduous process of firing Pygott. Right now he's on administrative leave.

The Clinton Foundation is a political organization, not a charity, even though it does some charitable work every now and then.

Watch as MSNBC's Morning Joe Panel bash those that defend this corrupt group.

John Heilemann of Bloomberg brings up a very good point about how many left-leaning media outlets are calling for the "farming out" of the little chariatable work that the Clinton Foundation does to other organizations. But of course that won't work for the Clintons because those efforts won't be about them, and of course the Clintons will lose this important influence-peddling outlet.

The Democratic Party and its labor arm, the public-sector unions, have destroyed Illinois.

Over a half-million Illinoisans signed a petition to amend the constitution so the politicians don't draw the boundaries for state legislative districts. Right now politicians choose their voters--not the other away around.

But Democratic Supreme Court justices sided with the bosses over the people who are trying to save a sinking ship.

Illinois' population is declining and it has the worst credit rating of the fifty states, largely because of bribes disguised as overly-generous pensions to members of those public-sector unions.

An Illinois Supreme Court divided along party lines on Thursday kept off the November ballot a referendum question asking voters whether the state constitution should be amended to take much of the politics out of drawing House and Senate district boundaries.

Democratic justices on the state's high court agreed with a Cook County judge's finding that the proposal did not fit a narrow legal window for a petition-driven initiative to change the Illinois Constitution. Republican justices disagreed, filing separate dissenting opinions.

The 4-3 ruling is a win for Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, who opposed the referendum, suggesting it would hurt protections on ensuring minority representation. The speaker has maintained his hold at the Capitol for more than three decades in part because he's had the power to draw the boundaries of legislative districts, and a longtime Madigan ally was the attorney for People's Map, which sued.

Note how Boss Madigan uses the favorite crutch of he Democrats, race-baiting, to justify his need to keep his grip on power.

Illinois needs a new constitution. Twelve years is a long time but the ballot question of whether the Land of Lincoln should hold another constitutional convention will be on the ballot in 2028.

The only thing standing in the way of political reform is Mike Madigan. Madigan and his allies sued to stop citizen-led ballot initiatives for Independent Maps and term limits, and the Speaker has used his power to stop both from passing or being voted on in Springfield. Madigan has worked tirelessly against reforms that would threaten his ability to rig Illinois' political system in his favor. Legislators from both parties must reject Madigan's obstructionism and demand reform.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

It's vacation time for Marathon Pundit--and as with my last trip outside of Illinois, which was to Detroit, I am going to the liberal Valhalla of Portland, Oregon. Among other things I will seek to confirm rumors that Oregon's largest city has a very large homeless population. But most of our travels--yes, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and Little Marathon Pundit will be coming along--will be at the many national parks in the area, all undoubtedly much better than Chicago's, the Pullman National Monument.

West of Pullman is Roseland, which is the setting for my favorite and most-read post so far of 2016. This one took a lot out of me, as Requiem did for Mozart. Only I clearly didn't die while writing it.

One thing about leftists that particularly infuriates me is that they indirectly--or directly--tell us that they are so much smarter than everyone else and therefore shouldn't be held accountable for their transgressions.

This morning on MSNBC, former State Department spokeswoman Nayreera Haq dismissed allegations of lying by Hillary Clinton by telling viewers that she operates on "a really high level."

"It's time for our society to address some honest and very, very difficult truths," Trump said. "The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes and more poverty."

He ticked off statistics on crime, poverty and education that have plagued Milwaukee, which he said was a city run by Democrats "decade after decade."

"To every voter in Milwaukee, to every voter living in the inner city or every forgotten stretch of our society, I'm running to offer you a much better future, a much better job," Trump said.

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward while on CBS This Morning said of the person with the most corrupt record ever to run for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, that she "has not come totally clean" about emails, and that she has a "habit of secrecy.”

Tied houses were common in Chicago before Prohibition. A late 19th-century licensing law was enacted to drive dive bars out of business. It may have worked--if you look at the unintended architectural legacy of that legislation.

Tavern operators turned to breweries, often Milwaukee-based Schlitz, which supplied not only the buildings for these watering holes, but also the necessary supplies and equipment. The concept, which came from England, is called a tied house.

But saloon keepers, in exchange for this largess, were compelled to purchase the brewers' beer; that's the tie, or to use a more modern term, tie-in.

Pictured below is a Schlitz tied house at 94th and Ewing on the Southeast Side. It's believed to be the last Schlitz bar in Chicago with its original stained glass Schlitz globe logo.

Above of course is the Schlitz stained glass. Note the carved stone version above it on the building.

The Voltstead Act of course created a different type of tied house, ones in Chicago often had to buy beer from Al Capone.

Legal beer ,wine, and alcohol sales returned after the most lame-brained and destructive amendment to the US Constitution was repealed in 1933, but alcohol was more regulated than ever. In Illinois, direct sales from breweries, wineries, and distilleries to stores, restaurants, and bars, and well, to anyone, was banned. That law is still in effect. Booze, brew, and wine producers sell their goods to distributors, who then sell it to properly-licensed retailers and food and beverage establishments.

The era of tied houses was over in Illinois and elsewhere, as other states have tough controls on reselling alcohol too.

The national news media, with good reason, has been focusing on the riots ninety miles north of Chicago in Milwaukee.

But there is the usual news to report in Chiraq. Over the past weekend nine people were shot to death, including the 20-year-old son of a Chicago police officer. The other fatal shootings occurred in the usual areas, the South and West Sides.

On this Chicago-style pay-to-play maneuver where $1 million Clinton Foundation donor Rajiv Fernando--who is from Chicago--receiving an appointment to the secretive International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) told Chris Wallace today on Fox News Sunday, "I'm not sure that was a good idea."

As for the Clinton Foundation, while it does some charitable work here and there, it's real purpose is to serve as an influence-peddling slush fund and an employment program for Clinton cronies.

Hey McCaskill: Appointing Fernando was a terrible idea.

If the play-to-play manner of government is something you like, then vote for Chicago-born and ILL-inois-bred Hillary Clinton in November.

Racial tension in Barack Obama's exposed itself again yesterday after a Milwaukee police officer fatally shot a man who refused to drop his semiautomatic handgun. Hours later riots broke out on the city's north side as a BP gas station, a BMO Harris bank, an O'Reilly Auto Parts store, and a police car were torched. Reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were chased--not by Trump voters, but rioters. It seems everyone but hardened leftists hates the media these days.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The leader of a New York City mosque and an associate were fatally shot in a brazen daylight attack as they left afternoon prayers Saturday.

The police said 55-year-old Imam Maulama Akonjee and his 64-year-old associate, Tharam Uddin, were each shot in the back of the head as they left the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid mosque in the Ozone Park section of Queens shortly before 2 p.m.

Both men were pronounced dead later Saturday, an administrator at Jamaica Hospital said.

Two days ago Barack Obama released his summer play list. Donald Trump won't foist such crap like that on us. Obama's musical taste are like his speeches--pleasing (to some)--but you forget what you heard a few minutes later.

You cannot say the same thing about Iggy Pop and the Stooges' "No Fun." One listen and you'll remember for ever. Especially when you see the legendary Detroit-area native perform it.

Watch as a mellower Pop--he no longer cuts himself, vomits, or exposes himself on stage--belt out this classic at a 2012 gig.

"Are you having any fun?" Pop asks the Parisian audience. "Well, I never have any fucking fun. No fun!"

That's how I feel after nearly eight years of Obama.

I first the heard this song when my college friend Murp played the equally grungy version by the Sex Pistols--and whenever we had the requisite number of "diet Cokes" that record would be placed on his turntable.

A suspected Russian hacker has leaked the email addresses and cell phone numbers of almost every Democrat in the House of Representatives - along with the message claiming the presidential election is being 'settled behind the scenes.'

It's the latest cyber-attack on the Democratic party since WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of hacked emails from inside the DNC and Russian hackers apparently broke into the computers of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Top Democrats have claimed that Russian intelligence is behind the cyber-attacks as part of an attempt to influence the election.

Documents released appear to include information from U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's computer.

Even if it was the Russians who hacked the DNC computers--which is anything but certain--why isn't the media blaming the Democrats for being irresponsible?

While on Anderson Cooper CNN's 360° show, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman slapped down the claims by the Hillary Clinton campaign that the state department employee Cheryl Mills conducting interviews for the Clinton Foundation slush fund is not a big deal.

Not only are the latest Hillary Clinton email revelations about the Clinton Foundation slush fund serious, Charles Krauthammer argues that the Democratic nominee could be in for an October surprise with new emails.

According to a hard-hitting government task force report released Thursday, intelligence generated by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) was manipulated to paint a rosier picture of the U.S. effort to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

The report finds that, beginning in mid-2014, final intelligence reports issued by CENTCOM contradicted the initial internal assessments made by its own analysts, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod.

"The facts on the ground didn't match what the intelligence was saying out of the United States Central Command," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., a member of the task force.

The military CENTCOM is responsible for American security interests in 20 nations, stretching from Egypt through the Arabian Gulf region and into central Asia.

If this is the type of government that you want, then vote for Hillary Clinton in November.

The dishonest mainstream media is spending four-times the amount of time on Donald Trump's Second Amendment comments in regards to Hillary Clinton than the Taliban-loving father of the Orlando terrorist who killed 49 people at a night club sitting behind the Democratic nominee at a Florida rally.

The Never Trump wing of the Republican Party is dominated by influence peddlers who are accustomed to getting their way, supporters of "comprehensive immigration reform," which essentially means amnesty for illegal aliens, and insider deals.

A veteran Republican campaign donor who's pushing for immigration reform says he hopes "Trump and his supporters are humiliated" on Election Day.

William Kunkler, a private equity executive who backed Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, said he wasn’t voting for the GOP nominee and expected Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would become president and move quickly to push immigration changes.

:Republicans will be licking their wounds after the effects of Trump leading the ticket and should be willing to deal with (Clinton) on sensible reform," Kunkler, co-chair of the Illinois Business Immigration Council, said at a panel hosted by the group and FWD.us, the immigration advocacy organization founded by Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg.

Kunkler — who backed and helped bundle campaign cash for previous GOP nominees including Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — was one of the few speakers to openly mention Trump by name to an audience at the tech incubator TechNexus in the Lyric Opera building.

Seated in his office here, wearing neither a necktie nor a frown, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is remarkably relaxed for someone at the epicenter of a crisis now in its second year and with no end in sight. But, then, stress is pointless when the situation is hopeless. Besides, if you can ignore the fact that self-government is failing in the nation's fifth-most populous state, you can see real artistry in the self-dealing by the Democrats who, with veto-proof majorities in the state legislature, have reduced this state they control to insolvency.

Illinois's government, says Rauner, "is run for the benefit of its employees." Increasingly, it is run for their benefit when they retire. Pension promises, though unfunded by at least $113 billion, are one reason some government departments are not digitized at all.

What is misleadingly called the state’s constitution requires balanced budgets, of which there have been none for 25 years. This year, revenues are projected to be $32.5 billion, with spending of $38 billion. Illinois Democrats are, however, selective constitutionalists: They will die in the last ditch defending the constitution’s provision that says no government pension can be “diminished or impaired.”

The government is so thoroughly unionized (22 unions represent almost all government employees), that "I can't," Rauner says, "turn on a light switch without permission." He exaggerates, somewhat, but the process of trying to fire someone is a career, not an option.

Illinois, not surprisingly, is one of the few states losing population.

This is about the mainstream media’s reporters, editors and producers, whose credo is supposed to be fairness.

And now some of them are flat-out making the case for unfairness—an unprecedented approach for an unprecedented campaign.

Put aside, for the moment, the longstanding complaints about journalists being unfair to Republicans. They never treated Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush or Bob Dole like this.

Keep in mind that the media utterly misjudged Trump from the start, covering him as a joke or a sideshow or a streaking comet that would burn itself out. Many of them later confessed how wrong they had been, and that they had missed the magnitude of the anger and frustration that fueled Trump's unlikely rise.

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